The Oscar-winning screenwriter of 1999 erotic drama Eyes Wide Shut has branded the film’s leading man Tom Cruise an ‘egocentric control freak’ while casting doubt on the ‘passion’ between the actor and his then-wife Nicole Kidman.
Veteran writer Frederic Raphael, 91, takes aim at the Hollywood star, as well as legendary film director Stanley Kubrick, in his acerbic new book, Last Post.
Raphael infamously fell out with the Kubrick family over his scathing 1999 memoir, Eyes Wide Open, which detailed his experience working with the late filmmaker and his notoriously exacting directing style, that ultimately saw him disinvited from the premiere.
His vendetta continues in his latest work, which addresses 22 now-deceased family members and former collaborators in letters recounting their time together.
In his letter to Kubrick, Raphael accuses Cruise, along with Kubrick’s wife Christiane Harlan and her brother Jan Harlan, of trying to write him out of the director’s ‘history’ and for being responsible for his unflattering portrayal on Wikipedia.
‘There has been an incessant campaign, led by the Harlans, whom I never met during the two or three years of addressing myself exclusively to you, to deny that I had anything much to do with the final version of Eyes Wide Shut,’ he writes.
‘Until the Writers Guild intervened, they tried to eliminate me from the credits.’
He adds: ‘The Harlans and Master Cruise have managed to insert some derogatory stuff in my Wikipedia entry.
‘There must be some way of excising the libel, but I lack the modern skill or the dreary energy to pursue the matter. Their sullen purpose is to establish your grand-masterliness…’
The remark is believed to be in reference to a Wikipedia entry citing film critic Roger Ebert’s 1999 interview with Cruise who had slammed Raphael’s blistering account of working with Kubrick.
Cruise was quoted saying: ‘He [Raphael] wouldn’t have written it if Stanley had been alive. Opportunistic. Self-serving. Inaccurate. I don’t know that man at all and I’ve never met him. It’s been interesting seeing how people have behaved afterward.’
Later in his letter, Raphael goes on to take several more jabs at the Mission: Impossible star, his ties to Scientology, and his failed marriage to Nicole Kidman.
He makes no effort to conceal his contempt for the actor, who he also claims offered him an unspecified job in an apparent bid to control him after filming for the movie wrapped.
‘I have never been called a liar by anyone as I have been by the Harlan clan and by Tom Cruise, egocentric control freak to whom I have never spoken,’ he writes.
‘He did offer me a job though, soon after you finished shooting; the better to have me on a leash, no doubt. In his turn, he too seems to need the control he finds in Scientology…’
He adds: ‘Since Eyes Wide Shut, he has spent a lot of time running for his living, winning fixed fights or hurtling into space. Nothing like a helmet for heading off dialogue.’
In a withering swipe directed at both Cruise and Kubrick, Raphael goes as far to question the filmmaker’s judgment and motives for casting ‘Cruise (hence Nicole)’ in the film.
‘[I]t was never admiration for his versatility, was it? From all accounts, you gave him slow hell for Warner Brothers’ money,’ he writes.
‘You slave-drove him for what he cost and he took it like a man. What do you suppose he ever told the Scientology brass that locked him in hock to them?’
He continues: ‘Was there something just a touch naïve in your idea that casting a married couple as a marred couple would enable you to put “the truth” on the screen?
‘One thing you can be pretty sure of: whatever any conjugal duo may disclose in public about their relationship, they rarely let any crucial cat out of the bag.
‘Did you honestly suppose Cruise and Kidman were bound in genuine passion, rather than embraced in a careerist merger?’
Raphael is equally scathing of the actress, writing: ‘Kidman has been a star for many years for many people: can you think of a single movie of hers you wanted to see again.’
The author’s bitter commentary throughout the letter shows that Raphael’s power struggle with Kubrick – who died months before the movie’s release – during the film’s production remains a source of deep resentment to this day.
Referring to the alleged campaign to undermine his contributions to the project, Raphael writes that Cruise and the Harlans ‘ignore the fact that expertise often requires an opponent who is, in some regards, a collaborator.’
‘Your boosters deny you subtlety by wishing that you found me superfluous; aesthetic Stalinists, they have sought to write me out of your history.’
He continues: ‘You will believe me when I say that, proud as I was to be working with you, I knew very well that you were always bound to make what began as ‘our’ movie entirely your own.’
Raphael’s reference to Jan Harlan is believed to be in response to an interview he gave in 2007 interview cited on Wikipedia expressing satisfaction that Raphael had to asked to record a DVD commentary for Eyes Wide Shut, adding the writer ‘may have felt hurt by the fact that Stanley returned to a close approximation of the original story by Arthur Schnitzler.’
Christiane, herself, also publicly responded to Raphael’s book Eyes Wide Open at the time in 1999, in a statement saying: ‘We believe that Mr. Raphael, whilst professing praise and a degree of affection for his subject, has in fact denigrated Stanley and unjustly caused pain to those who knew him well… Mr. Raphael’s analysis of Stanley’s personality bears no relation to the man we knew and loved so well.’
